It has so far been widely performed to supply a fully packaged cop to an automatic winding unit instead of an empty cop.
According to one method, for example, a winding unit consisting of a winding drum, a slub catcher, an empty paper tube and an empty paper tube support cradle was travelled. According to another method, on the other hand, the winding unit was fixed. In either case, however, it was necessary to store the fully packaged cops in the magazine as to quickly exchange the empty cop for a new packaged cop. A variety of methods were so far proposed to supply the full packaged cops into the magazine either manually or automatically.
This present invention relates to an apparatus for automatically supplying the cops, which is suited for use in an automatic winding machine having winding units of the fixed type, the individual winding units being equipped with a magazine.
The applicant has previously filed Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 134955/74 entitled "Method and Apparatus for Supplying Cops", dealing with an apparatus for automatically supplying cops having the combined merits of automatic feeder and manual service characterized by the provision of magazine-equipped winding units of the fixed type, wherein the cops were allowed to be thrown into the magazine and the cop containers having a bottom plate which can be opened or closed were secured on the conveyer at the rear side of the machine, so that the fully packaged cop in the cop containers could be supplied to the winding units.
According to the method proposed in the above-said patent application, the half-packaged bobbins in the magazine were first supplied to a peg and, when there was no cop in the magazine, the fully packaged bobbins on the conveyor were supplied to the peg.
Although the apparatus of the above-said previous application yielded sufficiently good results, some inconvenience were still involved. For instance, if there would be small number of half-packaged bobbins in the magazine, the magazine remains empty for a long time to decrease the merit of the magazine, and furthermore, it was necessary to install an additional device for preferentially supplying the half-packaged bobbins in the magazine over the fully wound bobbins.